Love, Friendship and Chaos
by Alara Rogers
Summary: "Three's A Crowd" endcap. In which Discord hates his life, Cadance is a bit of a troll, and Twilight learns an important lesson about friendship and the concept of negative vs positive attention. Also, a draconequus makes a tolerable kite when necessary. Rated T for a bit of risque banter.
1. Chapter 1

The ground rumbled violently. Before she had time to even think about it, Twilight found herself half-running, half-flying, barely escaping the grasp of the plant-worm thing that had suddenly erupted out of the ground. Her attempt to get any kind of height was stymied by a draconequus suddenly landing on her, arms wrapped around her neck and tail wrapped around her middle. Twilight turned to face the thing, horn at the ready, backing away as its maw opened and tentacles flung themselves outward.

"What in the _world!?_" Discord's exclamation sounded almost like a shriek.

It hadn't surprised Twilight when Discord had wrapped himself around her in an apparent pretense of terror, after he'd been pretending all day to be sick and needing her attention. It hadn't surprised her that he was improbably light, either; her ability to fly was impeded more by his bulk and how extremely non-aerodynamic having him clinging to her was making her than by his weight. But hearing what sounded like a genuine exclamation of fear and shock from him – _that_ shook her. She'd been certain Discord had invented that creature just to annoy her. If he really _was_ startled by it – if he really _was_ afraid and not being a gigantic attention-hogging drama llama again – that didn't say a lot of good things about her and Cadance's ability to fight the thing off indefinitely.

The creature reared up, Twilight readied a blast, Discord raised his talon to snap, and Twilight could feel Cadence next to her gathering magical energies for a shield.

And then it spat some sort of goo at them.

Twilight was startled enough not to fire the blast she had prepared. Cadance's shield converted to a magic health bubble spell instead, purging the ponies of the goo, and any disease organisms it might be carrying, instantly. The creature slumped backward, sliding back into its hole in a trail of goo.

Discord was still covered in the stuff. He hadn't managed to summon any kind of spell in time. For a moment Twilight wondered if Cadance had left him out of the health bubble on purpose, and then realized that that was impossible; Discord was still hanging on Twilight. Leaving him out of the bubble would have risked leaving her out as well. It just hadn't worked on him. Which made a certain amount of sense. Discord was mostly impervious to harmonic magic, the kind that almost all unicorn magic used.

Or he could be trying to repeat his fake illness. Within seconds, he had turned as green all over as he'd been blue before, and dark spots appeared all over his fur. Diseases didn't work that fast and Twilight had actually never seen a disease turn a pony's fur or feathers a different color. Discord wasn't a pony, but if anything that ought to make him _less_ likely to get sick from pretty much anything.

Before she could say anything about it, he suddenly became extremely heavy. Twilight staggered, and Discord's arms and tail slipped free of her body. He crashed to the ground with a startled cry, falling on his back.

Twilight backed away from him. "Discord, what are you trying to pull _now?_"

"Pull? I'm not trying to pull anything!" He sat up, brushing the dirt off himself with every appearance of being genuinely irritated. "Just look at me! What did that thing _do?_"

"It's given you the green pox, apparently," Cadence said. "A terrible illness. First the victims turn green, then they start itching uncontrollably, then they foam at the mouth, and finally they're overwhelmed with a desperate need to confess their love to inanimate objects." She shook her head sadly.

Discord glared at Cadance. "Oh, you're very funny, _princess,_" he spat. "You'll be taking Pinkie Pie's title as Equestria's resident comedian any day now."

"Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't make those things?" Twilight asked skeptically.

"They weren't supposed to come out like _that!_" Abruptly Discord seemed to realize what he had just admitted to. "I – I mean, I've never – I didn't—" He wilted slightly under Twilight's glare. "The tatzlwurms were supposed to be _much_ smaller than that," he confessed. "They were just supposed to be a, a challenge. You know. A bit of an obstacle to make things interesting. Not that giant... _thing_. And where did that repulsive goo come from and what has it _done_ to me?" He made a show of struggling to his feet and sinking back down again. "I haven't been this weak since... never! Wait, am I turning to stone again? Don't tell me—"

"You're not turning to stone," Twilight said, exasperated. "You're just green."

"But I feel so heavy," Discord said plaintively. "I can barely move my muscles. I suppose you're right, they can't be turning to stone because I can still feel them, but they _ache_."

"Right. You just spent the whole day pretending to be sick to mess up my day with my sister in law, and now you're _really_ sick. Discord, how stupid do you think I am?"

"Why, I don't think you're stupid at all," Discord said, in what was probably supposed to be an overdramatic, how-could-you-think-such-a-thing tone, except for the coughing fit at the end, which left him doubled over on the ground, clutching at the grass as if he was afraid of sliding off the mountain.

"Uh-huh. So why do you think I'm going to believe that you're really sick _now?_"

Discord looked up at her, lifting his head slightly off the ground. "Because I really am!" He lowered his head again. "Or something. Maybe I'm under some sort of spell. Why do I feel so weak?"

"Don't know, don't care," Twilight said. "You ever hear the expression, 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?'"

"Twilight, be reasonable. You already passed my friendship test! Why would I need to do the same—" He started coughing again.

"I don't know. It doesn't make any sense that you'd think I'd fall for it _now_. But that's your specialty, isn't it? Things that don't make any sense." She looked over at Cadance. "Come on, Cadance. Let's go home."

"Wait!" Discord pulled himself to his feet, moving slowly and as if his body was dragging on him. "Twilight, I _really_ don't feel well at all. I'm entirely serious about this. I need help."

"So teleport home," Twilight said. "Or fly. You can fly with us if you insist you need someone to spot you."

"I _can't fly._" He flapped his wings a couple of times, pitifully. They were plainly much too small to give him any lift on their own, without his magic negating gravity, which it was apparently not doing. "I'm much too weak. I can barely stand up!" To illustrate his point, he wobbled and almost fell over, catching himself by bracing his tail against the ground at the last moment.

"Discord, we're done here. I don't know why you're trying so hard to make me believe this particular story, but it's way too coincidental for you to get really sick just after you've been faking being sick all day. And the same _kind_ of sickness – just a different color."

"I know!" Discord said, a pleading note in his voice. "There's not making sense, and there's being entirely stupid. Do you think I don't _know_ how unlikely this is? I wouldn't try to fake another illness right now, because I _know_ you wouldn't believe me!"

"So I'm supposed to believe you because you wouldn't fake an illness because I wouldn't believe you."

"Yes!"

"No." She turned to Cadance, who'd spent the whole interchange looking at Discord with a speculative expression. "Let's go home, Cadance."

"Do you really think that's wise?" Cadance asked, concern in her voice.

"Yes," Twilight said, flapping her wings and lifting off the ground. "It's almost dark, and we don't want to be out here in unfamiliar territory when night falls."

"Twilight, _please._ I'm not faking this! I—my magic isn't working and I feel awful, _please_ help me." Twilight ignored him, beckoning Cadance to follow her, and after a moment of looking at Discord with uncertainty, the other alicorn finally did so. "No, wait!" Discord shouted, as they took to the air. "Don't leave me here!"

"I'm pretty sure you can find your own way home," Twilight called down to him. "Fluttershy will be back tomorrow around lunchtime, so if you really aren't feeling well, I'm sure you can go drop in on her once you get back."

"But I can't! I—_Twilight!_" She turned away from the draconequus and began to fly in earnest. "You've disappointed me, Twilight, I'm very disappointed!" he called after her, and then started coughing again.

Cadance sounded worried. "Twilight, are you _absolutely_ sure this is a good idea?"

"Yes," Twilight said, and then threw up a silence bubble around herself and Cadance. "No. Please put up a bubble around this one."

Cadance did as Twilight suggested, so that Twilight could cast a sonic illusion outside the bubble, the sound of flapping wings, to mask the presence of a silence bubble at all. "What are you thinking?"

"I want to land some distance away and cast a scrying spell on him, when he thinks we've gone. If he's faking, he'll probably have teleported home by now. If he's not... well, I want to see what he does when he thinks we're not watching."

"Ah, I see." Cadance nodded. "And maybe teach him a bit of a lesson about crying timberwolf, I'm guessing?"

Twilight grinned. "I really do think it's way too much of a coincidence for the whatever he called it, tatzlwurm? Is that what he said?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Right. It's ridiculous that the tatzlwurm could get him sick, _right_ after he's been pretending to be sick all day, especially since he admitted he had something to do with creating or modifying the things. But... he was taking it pretty far for a scheme of some kind. When he was faking, he kept using his powers all over the place. He's not doing that anymore. So... _maybe_ he's actually telling the truth this time. But I want to know for sure, first."

"Don't you think it would be better to send the message that you can rely on your friends to help you when you need it?"

"Not if it means sending the message that your friends are doormats. Or idiots. Discord has to know that sometimes, he's going to get called on his games. If he isn't faking, we'll help him, but I want him to know that he can't fool me the same way twice."

She chose a likely looking spot and glided down to a landing, Cadance following her. "All right. Let's see what he's up to when no one's looking at him."

An image formed. Discord, still green and spotted, was on all fours, walking very slowly down the mountain, his tail dragging in the dirt. "... stupid tatzlwurm," he was muttering. "Chaos, why do you do this to me? Don't I bring you enough exploding flowers and thermonuclear chocolate? You're a witch, you know that? Think you wouldn't be so high maintenance after all these years..." He sighed. "Note to self: stay better focused on being unfocused. Obviously crossed some streams someplace... oh, gods, why am I so _tired?_ Feel like... I've been outrunning... Elder Gods... for a century or two. I do _not_ like this. Stupid Twilight Sparkle."

Cadance looked over at Twilight. "That doesn't sound like he's faking."

"Maybe not. But if he suspects that I might be watching him, he might be dragging it out."

At this point, the ground erupted under Discord with a roar. He shrieked like a foal and rolled, barely clearing the area by the time the tatzlwurm burst free. "Oh, for the love of-! This is ridiculous!" he shouted.

One of the tatzlwurm's tentacles snagged Discord's leg and started dragging him in. He doubled his body over into nearly a circle, bringing his teeth and claws into the same area as his leg, and swiped at the tentacle with his claws while grabbing it with his talon. It tore, just as another one wrapped around Discord's tail. Snarling, Discord flipped himself in the other direction, backward, grabbed the tentacle around his tail with his mouth and bit down, ripping it in half.

Twilight watched with interest. She'd never seen Discord use his body as a weapon before; for all that he was a large, savage-looking creature with a predator's teeth and claws, he was almost excessively civilized. Immature, selfish, and malicious, but civilized. His weapons of choice were invariably words, followed by his chaos powers. He even went two-legged most of the time, crippling his body's ability to move quickly in favor of being able to employ his opposable thumbs. The fact that he wasn't using his magic to fight the tatzlwurm suggested he might not be faking his illness, but the fact that he was able to react so quickly and with such apparent strength to the attack threw into question his complaints about being weak.

The tatzlwurm shrieked and reared back. It seemed to be a different one than the one that had sneezed goop all over them; possibly the same one that had been under the flower, because it seemed robust and healthy, and also had the ability to fly, or at least jump absurd distances. It lunged at Discord, who twisted sideways again, rolled under the creature and raked it with his claws, then rolled out from under it, came to all fours, and ran frantically as it curled itself around with a scream and pursued him.

Discord ran straight for a cliff face, muttering something to himself as he ran. Twilight increased the sound amplification on the scrying spell so she could hear him. "...know you wanna break loose, come on, do it for old Discord, you never liked being part of that mountain anyway, come on, come _on_, be your own giant hunk of rock and stop living in daddy mountain's shadow, come _on_..."

He came up against the cliff face, backed against it, panting hard. The tatzlwurm charged straight for him. For a horrifying moment Twilight thought, _what if he isn't faking? What if that thing _eats_ him before we can get back there?_ She readied a teleport spell – as annoying as Discord was, she didn't want to see him die, or even suffer grievous physical injury. Before she could invoke it, Discord was twisting himself out of the way, moving more like the tatzlwurm himself than like a creature with legs. The tatzlwurm slammed into the cliff face, and a large, jagged piece of the cliff face broke loose and fell on it, squashing its head. Its back end twitched once, and then went still.

"YES!" Discord pumped a fist into the air. "I've still got it! Woohoo!" He then collapsed into a puddle of coils on the ground, coughing. "Ugh. So tired... " Inching along the ground the same way he had when he'd asked Cadence and Twilight to carry him from the Starswirl exhibit and they'd refused, he made his way over to the dead tatzlwurm and the giant rock on top of it, got to his feet, and climbed the rock.

"Well, Bob, that wasn't quite as hilarious as the adventure I had with your cousin Tom a couple of years ago, but I'm glad to see that when push comes to shove—" Another coughing fit. When it subsided, Discord draped himself backward over the top of the rock, lion limb over his eyes as if the fading sunset was hurting his eyes. "...that you're willing to break free of Dad and be your own rock... did I thank you for saving my life back there? No? Well, thanks. You can be my new second best friend, Twilight obviously doesn't want the job." He turned over onto his belly. "Is this what nausea really feels like? I think I'd forgotten. Urgh. Either that or I've pulled every muscle in my abdomen. Why does it _hurt_ so much to move?" If it hurt him to move, it wasn't stopping him, apparently; he curled up on top of the rock, bending into a semicircle lying on the relatively flat top of the jagged boulder. "Feel so heavy... what's wrong with me? The chaos is there, I can feel it... just can't reach. So tired, hurts to breathe. I didn't turn the oxygen into glass shards, why does it feel like... I did? Maybe just... need some sleep. Yeah. I'll take a nap, feel better when I get up, then I'll go turn Twilight into a turnip for leaving me here... nah, Fluttershy won't like that... I'll just make her head _look_ like a turnip and pretend it's her own magic that did it. That'll work."

Twilight scowled. Cadance said, "Well, I'd say that's pretty definite. I can't imagine he'd say _that_ if he knew we were still watching him."

"I'll turn _him_ into a turnip," Twilight said. "I know he'll just turn himself back, but after everything he put us through today-!"

"You did leave him to be nearly eaten by a tatzlwurm because you thought he was faking an illness he really had," Cadance said.

"You're standing up for him?" Twilight looked at her sister-in-law in shock.

"I'm standing up for _you_, Twilight. You're a better pony than this. You were willing to try to take care of Discord _before_ you knew for certain that he was faking because of the chance that he might be sincere. Does the fact that he was faking illness all day really change anything? You already knew he was a liar, a trickster, and that he might be faking." She waved a hoof at the image, where Discord was shivering, trying to coil himself tighter, and mumbling something about wishing he could conjure himself a blanket. "It's pretty clear he's not faking _now._"

"Yeah, but the fact that he was faking it, and that he was actually _upset_ that you said this hadn't really disrupted your day with me and you needed a challenge like this, that tells me he set out deliberately to ruin my time with you! For no reason except that he despises friendship! And he uses 'friendship' as an excuse to do it!"

"I actually don't think that despising friendship was the reason he did this. I think—"

Whatever Cadance was going to say she thought was cut off by a rumbling sound in the image. Both ponies turned to watch as yet another tatzlwurm burst out of the ground right near the giant rock crushing the body of their compatriot, hissing and roaring.

"Oh, now, this is totally unfair!" Discord shouted. He tried to get to his feet, but before he could move, the tatzlwurm's tentacles had wrapped around his dragon leg, his tail, and part of his upper body as he tried to lunge up and away. "Chaos, why are you _doing_ this to me?" Discord wailed, scrabbling at the rock with both paw and talon, trying to cling to it as the tatzlwurm pulled at him. He thrashed, twisting and kicking, wings beating frantically, but the tatzlwurm had too much leverage. Slowly, inexorably, it pulled him across the surface of the rock, despite the fact that his talon was dug in hard enough that it was scoring gouges in the rock as the tatzlwurm pulled.

Discord started laughing. It wasn't one of his laughs of triumph or mockery or amusement or condescension. It sounded broken, hysterical, the laughter of a being who'd just discovered that the universe's ultimate practical joke was being played on him. The sound snapped Twilight out of her shocked focus on the images in her scrying spell.

"Cadance, I'm going to get him. Cover me!" Twilight teleported, directly above the tatzlwurm that was trying to pull Discord into its maw.

"Let go of my annoying pain in the rear friend!" she shouted, firing down at the tatzlwurm. She couldn't fire into its vulnerable mouth, Discord was too close to it. The tatzlwurm shrieked and thrashed, but took no serious injury.

Discord twisted his head around to look up at her. "_Twilight?_"

Cadance appeared, and fired at the back of the tatzlwurm's head. It screamed, its tentacles releasing Discord as it twisted around to face its new attacker. Discord fell off the rock and slumped onto the ground at its base, sitting against the rock, wide yellow eyes still staring at Twilight in shock. "You came back..."

Between the two of them, Cadance and Twilight alternately battered and wrestled the tatzlwurm back into the hole it came from. Then Cadance levitated Discord out of the way so Twilight could roll the large bulk of Bob the rock off the dead tatzlwurm and deposit it on top of the hole.

Cadance set Discord down against the base of the cliff. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Awful beyond belief." As Twilight landed next to them, Discord turned on her. "What _took_ you so long? I could have been—" Hacking and coughing. "-_killed!_"

His obvious anger might have been more menacing if he wasn't slumped at the base of the cliff in obvious misery, barely moving, his eyes completely bloodshot and his voice hoarse, with an irritating scratchy note to it as if he needed to clear his throat. He looked as if he could barely sit up. Every part of his body was tinged a dull green, and the dark spots all over the fur on his neck and head had multipled.

"Relax, Discord," Twilight said, smiling sardonically. "You just passed _my_ 'Is Discord Still Being A Big Fat Liar Or Is He Really Sick' test. Sorry about the tatzlwurm grabbing you before I could get here, but, you know, _I_ didn't put them here."

"They... weren't supposed... to be like this," Discord said, wheezing.

Cadance tried to cast a spell on him to strengthen and heal his lungs, but it slid off him like water off a greasy pan. "Don't... bother... my dear," Discord panted. "Healing... spells... don't work... on me."

"Oh, that must make life difficult," Cadance said sympathetically.

"Not unless... they draw from chaos," Discord said. "Don't... suppose either of you can do... chaos magic?"

Twilight and Cadance looked at each other. "It... hasn't really been among my top priorities to learn," Twilight said. "Given that my Element of Magic comes from _Harmony_, after all."

"I could make you fall in love with somepony," Cadance said. "Depending on how I cast it, that can be a chaotic spell."

Discord grimaced. "No thank you. I have... enough problems." He looked up at Twilight. "Let me... guess. You flew off... and spied on me... to see if I was faking?"

Twilight nodded. "Did you guess at the time, or are you just figuring it out now?"

"Now. At the time... I thought... you left me."

"Well, I'd give you a medal for passing my test, then, but I don't have one... actually, what happened to the one you gave me?" She looked down as she realized for the first time that the medal appeared to be gone.

Discord sighed. "Chaos has a problem with permanence..."

"Whatever you did to the tatzlwurms didn't wear off."

"I keep... telling you. That wasn't... how they were... supposed to come out." He closed his eyes. "I'm so tired. Can we go home?"

Twilight looked around. "I think that's going to be an issue," she said slowly. "If you can't fly, and you can't teleport... Cadance and I can't carry you with magic all the way back to Canterlot, or Ponyville, or wherever we're dropping you off, and your chariot seems to have disappeared just like the medal you gave me did."

Discord curled in on himself, coiling like a snake, with his legs inside the coils, and his wings spread out over them, shivering. His head was draped over the top of his own coils, eyes heavy-lidded though not quite closed anymore. "Can you get me a blanket?" he mumbled. "I'm so cold."

Twilight sighed. "The blankets and pillows you had with your chariot are also gone." She put a hoof on his forehead. "Huh. You're _much_ hotter than you were earlier."

Despite his apparent weakness, Discord smirked. "Oh, really? You prefer green on me that much? How flattering, Twilight, thank you."

Twilight scowled at him. "I am going to give Fluttershy the recipe for the grossest, most awful tasting, disgusting anti-fever potion I can find in the library and I'm going to have her make you take it."

"Oh no the horror." He couldn't even fake faking being worried.

Cadance cast another health bubble on Twilight. "Until we know what he has, we need to keep ourselves protected from getting it," she said. "If you touch him, you should cast a health bubble to sterilize anything you might pick up from him. The tatzlwurm sneeze acted on him so fast, we can't take any chances. If this is an illness, it could be incredibly contagious."

"Or maybe it only affects draconequui. Or avatars of chaos," Discord mumbled.

Twilight levitated one of the giant flower petals over to him. "One of these fell on me earlier. They're not perfect, but they'll block the wind, at least."

"Oh." He shivered when she dropped it over him, and then used his paws to pull it almost closed around the front of his coiled body, like a cape. "Thank you, Twilight. That... really isn't much better though."

"It's what we've got." How were they going to get him home? He was too large to carry on a single pony's back and there was no way they could fly with him draped across the both of them. Besides, now that he wasn't using his magic to lighten himself he was a lot heavier than he'd been. They didn't have his chariot, not that she wanted to pull that godawfully heavy thing again anyway, and they couldn't very well make a travois and pull him if they were going to fly...

...or could they?

Her face lit up with a manic grin as she figured out how they were going to do this.

* * *

Half an hour later, a heavily protesting Discord, straightened out, was wrapped tightly in giant flower petals, only his face and snout exposed. Tentacles from the dead tatzlwurm bound him, holding his arms, legs, and wings inside the flower petal cocoon and keeping it wrapped around him. The stem of the giant flower had been cut in half and hollowed out to make a travois long enough to lay him on, with a bit of magic to transform the outside of the stem into wood to make it stronger while leaving the inside as softer, squishier plant matter for a cushion. More strips of the stem had been transformed into ropes, some of which tied Discord's cocooned body onto the travois, tightly enough that he couldn't slip free. The travois wasn't entirely long enough for his full body, including tail, so a small part of his tail hung over the edge, swishing frantically but helplessly. Twilight was using more of the plant matter to create harnesses for herself and Cadance, so they could attach Discord's travois at four points and keep it more or less stabilized in the air.

"I would like to state, for the record, that I have the _strongest objections possible_ to this plan," Discord said, for the fourth time. Twilight thought he must really be upset to have repeated himself this many times. Discord didn't normally like repeating himself at all.

"And I would like to state, for the record, that I still don't see any other safe way for Cadance and I to transport you back home, so your objections are noted and are being ignored."

"Twilight, the tatzlwurm skin is fuzzy! Do you want me to peel enough of the skin off that we can wrap it around him for an extra layer of protection from the wind? We've got a long trip and I think he's got a pretty high fever."

"If you can magically cure it so it's more like leather than dead animal skin, sure."

"Well, it's actually a plant, so it won't be like leather, but I think I can cure it to be a little tougher on the inner surface, so we can put that side facing out and let the fuzzy side face him to keep him a little warmer."

"Please tell me I'm having a nightmare," Discord said. "Luna, I bow to your superiority, very funny, now let me wake up please."

"Do you have nightmares about mares tying you up fairly often?" Cadance said. "I think maybe if you found a way to explore your fantasies in a safe environment with a mare you trust, it might help with that."

Twilight turned bright red. "Cadance, _please_ don't—"

Discord was never one to be defeated in a contest of innuendo. "Why, Cadance, are you volunteering? I'm so very flattered, but what would Shining Armor think?"

"Discord! Of course I didn't mean _me_, we've only just met! How could we possibly have the mutual trust and respect necessary for a consensual and healthy BDSM relationship? You'd need to ask Pinkie Pie, of course. Fluttershy's a submissive herself, I think, so while she might be willing to domme you for your sake, I don't think she'd get much out of it."

"I'm not listening to this," Twilight said, pressing her hooves against her ears. "I'm not listening, I'm not listening."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what Flutters is capable of when she puts her mind to it," Discord said.

"I admit I don't know her that well; maybe she has hidden depths." Cadance smirked.

"I'M NOT LISTENING TO EITHER OF YOU! LA LA LA LA LA!"

Cadance laughed gently. "Relax, Twilight, I'm just teasing."

Discord sighed. "You really are related to Celestia, aren't you?" he said to Cadance.

"Well, adopted, but she pretty much raised me. Now don't wiggle around when I lift you, I'm trying to wrap this tatzlwurm skin around you to keep you warm."

"Or you could just _not_, I promise I won't complain about the cold, really—"

"You? Not complain about something? Sorry, I don't want to bring about the Apocalypse today," Twilight said. As Cadance wrapped the tatzlwurm skin around the entire travois, Twilight tied it into place with more of the ropes made from the flower stem. Creating something out of nothing took a _lot_ of magic, more than any of them could spare with Discord sick, but transforming something into something similar wasn't difficult for an experienced unicorn mage. Twilight was easily able to transmogrify the plant stem strips into strong, tough, flexible ropes.

As tempting as the thought of muzzling Discord was, his frequent coughing fits suggested he needed his mouth free to breathe properly. Instead, she shaped the top of the travois into a semi-rigid hood, large enough to accommodate his mismatched horns, that would serve as a windbreak, shade his eyes in case the moon was too bright, help keep him warm, and make it totally impossible for her or Cadance to hear a word he might say once they were in flight.

"I don't suppose you might have a tiny glass of water?" Discord asked as the two of them finished wrapping and tying him into place.

Twilight glared down at him. "NO."

"But my throat hurts."

"Doesn't change the fact that we don't have any glasses and I don't know where to find any water around here." She sighed. "You kept complaining how tired you were. Why don't you just try to get some sleep?"

"How am I supposed to sleep with two inexperienced flyers dragging me through the sky, tied up, helpless, entirely too weak to free myself, and with no magic to protect myself or fly if you accidentally drop me? Especially when you can't even spare me a tiny little bit of water?"

"What am I supposed to do, conjure it out of nothing? Oh, wait, I'm not a chaos spirit with a near infinite supply of magic, so _I_ can't do that."

"No, but you _could_ summon water out of the dead tatzlwurm," Discord snapped. "Living things, and dead things that used to be living, are mostly water. I can understand you being reluctant to vaporize innocent blades of _grass_ to keep _me_ from feeling like I've just eaten a bag of knives, given how little consideration you're giving me right now, but surely you can stomach damaging the dead body of a creature that's already _dead_, which tried to eat me and possibly you and your dear pal as well, to spare me a little bit to drink so I don't have to feel like my throat is a griffon's lunch?"

Twilight blinked. "I actually didn't think of that. Sorry."

She did as he suggested, modifying a weather control spell that could shape the behavior of water so that she could pull a stream of purified water out of the dead tatzlwurm, then carefully holding tight to it with her magic so she could guide it over to his mouth. She didn't have a cup, so she had to turn the stream into essentially a magic-guided water fountain that he could drink from by lifting his head slightly. He gulped water for what seemed like several minutes while Cadance attached ropes to the travois at several points. Finally he laid his head back. "_Thank_ you."

"Discord, it's not like I'm trying to make you suffer here."

"No? Not even the tiniest little bit of schadenfreude influencing your actions?"

She sighed. "I'm trying to make you as comfortable as I can, but you've put us all in a really bad situation. We're in an unfamiliar place, night's fallen, it's hard to see because the moon's barely up over the horizon yet, and there's dangerous creatures underground that made you sick and have nearly eaten all three of us. You're much too big for either Cadance or I to carry you, and we've got a _long_ way to fly home. We don't have the material to build a carriage or chariot, and yours disappeared when you got sick, or cursed or poisoned or whatever this is, so this is the best we can do."

"Maybe so, but you certainly seem gleeful about it," he grumbled.

"No, believe me, dragging you home across this kind of distance is the _last_ thing I want to be doing," Twilight said. "Don't think I'm glad you actually got sick. Even if I didn't have any consideration at all for your suffering –"

"Which you don't," Discord interrupted.

Twilight ignored him. "—the fact remains that I wasted a whole day catering to you when you _didn't_ need me to, and about the only good thing that could have come out of the fact that you were faking it was that I could stop having to take care of you, except then you actually got sick. I wouldn't have been real happy to spend the day taking care of one of my _best_ friends, the ones who I know would do anything for me. I've have done it, because that's what friends do, but I'd have known they'd do the same for me. You've never done anything for me as far as I can tell."

He glared at her. "When I do things for you, _I_ don't feel the need to brag about them and demand I be declared a Hero of Equestria, so you never find out."

"Oh, like what? What have you done for _anypony_ since you reformed?"

"I don't think I want to tell you. You're being mean." He harrumphed and squared his shoulders, tilting his head to the side. Presumably he'd be folding his arms if they weren't bound at his sides by the giant flower petals wrapped around his body and the vines tying the flower petals in place.

"That's awfully convenient. If you've never done anything, then pretending you don't want to talk about it is a great excuse."

"Don't try reverse psychology on me, my dear, I invented it."

"Twilight, I've got all the ropes in place," Cadance said. "Let's head on back. It's going to be really late by the time we get home."

Twilight sighed. "Yeah."

"Don't worry about the Starswirl exhibit. I'll invite them to bring their tour to the Crystal Empire if they'll do a one-day showing at the palace itself, and you can come to visit _me_ and we'll make a day of it, just Shining, you, and me. Or maybe invite your parents too if they'd be interested. What do you think?"

"That sounds fantastic!"

"No one ever invites _me_ to these things," Discord grumbled.

Twilight looked down at him. "Would you even be interested in an exhibit on Starswirl the Bearded?"

"Well, it's not as if anyone ever _asks._"

"So I'm asking now."

"Maybe. He _was_ my teacher, you know."

Twilight stared down at Discord, rather more shocked than if he had grown a second head. In fact, Discord growing a second head wouldn't be all that shocking at all, whereas what he'd just said frankly stunned her. "Wait, _what?_"

Discord smirked. "I'm very tired, Twilight. I think I'm going to take that nap now. How about you and Cadance get a move on? The night won't last forever, not unless Luna goes crazy again."

"You can't just say something like that to me and then leave it there like that! You _knew_ Starswirl the Bearded? Personally?"

Discord closed his eyes and began ostentatiously pretend-snoring.

"Twilight," Cadance said, not sharply, but firmly. "We really do have to get back. You can always talk to Discord about Starswirl tomorrow."

Twilight sighed. "You're right."

* * *

The trip home was a lot easier for Twilight than the trip out had been. They knew the distance, they'd covered the route before, and while Discord was much heavier than he'd been without his magic, the combined weight of him and the flower-stem travois was still much, much less than the weight of the chariot had been. Also, the moon was out. Twilight had always loved the night; it was so much more peaceful than the frenetic day. She caught her second wind easily. In the crisp, cool air of the early evening, she felt like she could fly forever.

Cadance wasn't in nearly as good shape, though. Twilight, being a brand new alicorn, had been practicing her flying a lot lately; Cadance's life had been so consumed lately with affairs of state and diplomacy and paperwork and meetings, she barely had time to do much walking, let alone flying, she told Twilight. Also, unlike Twilight, she'd never been much of a night owl. She was struggling gamely, but Twilight could see that between her exhaustion and the weariness of her wings, the trip was much rougher on her than it was on Twilight. Twilight considered the possibility of going up the coast to Las Pegasus to stay for the night, but if Discord's magic wasn't working and standard unicorn magic didn't work on him, there was no guarantee he could actually stay the night in a cloud city, and besides, he might be contagious.

There wasn't much choice but to keep going. Between here and Ponyville was a whole lot of nothing; there was the San Palomino Desert, which was sparsely settled by the type of ponies who didn't take well to strangers, and it was hard to get stranger than Discord. And the desert wasn't a place she wanted to camp for the night without camping supplies, even if everyone in her party were well, which they weren't. Discord needed to be gotten to someplace where he could get medical treatment of some kind and some hope of a diagnosis. The fact that whatever had been in that goo had almost instantly shut down his magic, made him weak and given him muscle aches, and within minutes had led him to start coughing and wheezing, worried Twilight. If it was a disease rather than a magical curse of some kind, it was moving much too rapidly, and if was a magical curse it was having too many different unrelated effects, plus a health bubble shouldn't have protected herself and Cadance from a curse.

She needed her library. As Discord was the only draconequus anypony had ever heard of, it wasn't exactly as if she expected any pony doctor to have any expertise in treating him. Fluttershy and Zecora, between them, probably had the best hope of coming up with a cure for this or something to alleviate the symptoms, if it was actually a disease. But if it _was_ a disease, most likely somepony had heard of it before. Unless Discord had somehow managed to invent it by accident. He had claimed the tatzlwurms hadn't come out the way he'd planned. She'd have to question him later as to whether he'd created them, or modified them from something that had already been there.

By the time they got back to the library, it was past midnight. Cadance was beyond exhausted; Twilight had to half-wrestle her into a bathtub and wake up Spike to give her a rubdown, because a pony who went to sleep after overexerting herself and getting drenched with sweat would be utterly miserable when she woke in the morning. While Spike was helping Cadance, Twilight set up a quarantine bubble in the middle of the library, dragged the mattress and blankets that she'd given Discord earlier when he'd been pretending to be sick over to the bubble and dumped them in, and then carried in Discord, who she'd left outside in his cocoon, dead asleep. He woke up briefly as she was using her magic to shred the cocoon off him, but seemed to be too tired even to talk. As soon as he was free to move, he curled up in a semicircle on the mattress, head balanced on a pile of pillows, pulled the blankets around himself, and closed his eyes again.

After making sure Cadance had gotten to bed all right, Twilight had Spike write a letter to Fluttershy telling her what had happened, and had Owlowliscious drop it off at her house, with instructions to go in her window, drop it on her kitchen table, and put a small purple amethyst star-shaped paperweight on top of it so Angel would know it was from Twilight and that therefore there would be hell to pay if he tried to make the letter disappear before Fluttershy could get it. She took her own bath, using her magic to give herself a rubdown so her muscles wouldn't lock up tomorrow, while she waited for his return. Once Owlowliscious had come back and confirmed the success of his mission, _finally_ Twilight could get some sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Cadance was accustomed to waking before dawn, and being in a strange place only accentuated that. She was physically worn out from the day's experiences, but she was too excited to be here in Ponyville with Twilight to be able to sleep late. Also, she ached. That had been a workout for her wings like nothing she'd experienced in _years_.

She crept downstairs quietly, looking to find something for breakfast. Something simple, country fare like hay or oats, not the elaborate fancy meals she'd been served in Canterlot or the Crystal Empire most of her life. Maybe an apple or a nice glass of juice.

The sound of the draconequus coughing his lungs out (not literally, thankfully, given that he didn't seem to have the ability to use his powers at the moment) in the quarantine bubble was disruptive enough to her appetite to put a kibosh on that plan, at least for the moment. Instead she went into the main library. "You're awake?"

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. "For some reason it's extremely difficult to sleep when your lungs are on fire and your _magic_ has stopped working for no particularly good reason."

"I know, isn't it?" Cadance said. "It must be as bad as having your wings feel like they've been stretched on a rack because you just had to fly for ten hours round trip because a spirit of chaos wanted somepony to pay attention to him."

Discord rolled his eyes. "I know what it feels like to overuse your wings," he said. "This is _much_ worse. Trust—" He began coughing again.

"You do sound miserable," Cadance said.

"Good, because I _am_ miserable. When is Fluttershy supposed to get home?"

"I believe Twilight said around noon."

"What good does _that_ do me? I have no idea what time it is now!"

"5 am."

Discord's eyes widened in an exaggerated expression of despair. Though actually he seemed to be childish enough that it might not be all that exaggerated. "_Six hours?_ How am I supposed to survive that long? Everything hurts, and Fluttershy's the only one who'll care."

Cadance decided not to tell him his math was wrong and it was really seven hours. In his current state that seemed cruel. "Well, I'm no expert, but if you'd like some warm broth, I was about to make myself some breakfast. I could heat you up an herbal broth for your chest and throat."

"You would do that for me?" His tone was both surprised and plaintive.

"Of course I would. Twilight would, if she was awake, and while both of us are her guests, I'm her family, so I feel obligated to do for her guests what she'd do if she could."

"When is _she_ going to wake up?"

"Twilight sleeps late. And you kept us both up _very_ late last night having to fly you back here. So I wouldn't guess she'd wake up until around ten."

Discord sighed. "Well, it's very gracious of you to extend me Twilight's hospitality when she can't be bothered to do it herself, Princess Cadance," he said. "I do apologize that my little test for Twilight interfered with your family fun time."

"Don't apologize for things you're not sorry for, Discord," Cadance said. "You did that on purpose and you know it."

He slumped slightly. "Well, if I'd known what a sweet, caring pony you are, maybe I would have thought better of it."

"Also, you don't need to try to butter me up. I'm going to make you the broth anyway," Cadance said, smiling. She headed for the kitchen before Discord could respond to that.

It took a few minutes to figure out where Twilight kept everything, but since she was obsessively neat and organized, once Cadance figured out which cabinet served which purpose it became obvious where the supplies she needed were. She made herself a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and a glass of apple juice, and for Discord a bowl of vegetable bouillion broth and a mug of ginger tea with a lot of honey in it for his throat. With a health bubble up around her, she opened the quarantine bubble, lowered the mug and bowl down to him, and closed up the quarantine bubble again. "Please don't make a mess. I'm going back to bed in a little while, so if you spill that, you'll have to clean it up, and without your magic I'm sure that will be inconvenient for you."

"If I spill it, then I don't get to drink it," Discord pointed out. "I'm fond of chaos, but not the kind that gets between me and my breakfast." He breathed in the fumes from the ginger tea. "Why, I think this might be helping already."

She sat by the bubble and ate her oatmeal, watching the sick draconequus mix a portion of the vegetable bouillon into the ginger honey tea, then pour some of the tea back into the soup bowl. He did spill a little bit of it onto the blankets, but not enough to worry about. He then proceeded to drink the contents of the soup bowl, and eat the liquid from the mug with a spoon –for a few bites, anyway, and then he seemed to get bored, or tired, and drank the rest of it.

When he was done, he made puppy dog eyes at her. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to get me a teensy tiny glass of water?"

"I'm considering it," Cadance said.

Her answer took him aback. "Considering it?"

"On the one hand, I'm sure it's important for you to keep your fluid intake up with this illness of yours. On the other hand... you _did_ just set up an incredibly elaborate plot to put Twilight and me through the wringer just to prove that Twilight really does care about you at all. And also secondarily to ruin her day with me."

"Now I never said that," he objected, and then started coughing again.

"Of course you never said it," Cadance said. "But you did say you were responsible for the tatzlwurms, because you wanted to provide a challenge—"

"They were supposed to have been a _lot_ smaller."

"And you admitted that you deliberately interfered with my time with Twilight, just a few minutes ago."

He closed his eyes. "Is this an interrogation? Should I be hiring a lawyer? Or are you just going to torture me with thirst so I'm forced to answer your questions?"

Cadance sighed. She got up, went to the kitchen, and poured a large glass of water for him. "Here you go," she said, putting it through the bubble with the same technique she'd used last time.

"Thank you," he mumbled.

"I don't need you to answer my questions; the answers are obvious," she said. "There were other things you never said in so many words, either, but to me, they were equally obvious."

"Oh, what is that supposed to mean?"

Cadance glanced at the staircase. There was no sign of either Twilight or Spike. "I mean," she said quietly, "that you chose the day your friend was out of town, rejected Pinkie Pie when she offered to take care of you, made Rarity and Applejack sick so that they couldn't-"

"Temporarily!"

"Temporarily sick," Cadance agreed, "all in order to make sure the only available pony to care for you would be Twilight, on a day when she was supposed to be spending time with me, a friend and family member she hasn't seen in a long time. You made the two of us carry you to the literal ends of Equestria to prove that Twilight would be willing to help you if you needed her to, even if she had other priorities she'd have much preferred to engage in. And I think you know your craft far too well for me to think you seriously thought you could disrupt my friendship with Twilight."

"Well, of course not! You're family. No one gives up on family simply because of one annoying day."

Cadance nodded. "You had no nefarious plot ahoof to ruin our friendship. You weren't trying to get us killed, given that you didn't even recognize that creature and you keep saying it wasn't supposed to be nearly as dangerous as it ended up... you were simply trying to annoy me and make me regret spending the day with Twilight, and make her regret the day as well." She smiled at him. "But you made a grave miscalculation."

"What, in letting that creature get its snot all over me? I admit that was unforeseen—"

"No, Discord." She leaned against the bubble so she could speak even more quietly. "In that you did all this in front of the Alicorn of _Love_."

Discord blinked goop-encrusted eyes at her for a moment, and then widened them. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're trying to imply," he said snappishly, but far too quickly.

Cadance shook her head. "You're in my domain now, Discord," she said softly. "I'm not mistaken about such things, any more than you'd be mistaken if you noted me having a fight with my husband. Do you actually know yourself well enough to know what you're feeling, and you simply think you can misdirect me? Or are you clueless enough that you don't know?"

Discord stared at her in utter shock. "I – you don't – I'm the avatar of chaos, Cadance! Surely you don't think you can comprehend _my_ emotional states the way you could a pony's!"

"No?" Cadance smiled broadly at him. "As nearly as I can tell, being the avatar of chaos doesn't do anything to stop you from having the same emotions ponies do. It just makes you respond to them in remarkably immature ways." Her smile grew bigger. "Love is chaos, Discord. I know more about the kind of magic you wield than possibly any other pony in Equestria. That screen you use so nopony can really get a fix on your mind or heart, so lie detection spells don't work on you and heart reading spells don't work and nopony can ever use magic to figure out how you really feel about anything? I can see how that would work very well against ponies that know nothing of chaos magic... but I couldn't master my domain without learning a good bit about it. Love can bring about the most perfect of harmonies, but in its fundamental nature, love is chaos. One must know _both_ harmonic and chaotic magic to master love. And since you don't expect ponies to know anything about chaos magic... you never built that shield to block a heart reader who understands your magic."

She leaned forward into the bubble, pressing her face into it, as Discord shrank back from her. "I see right through you," she said softly. "Don't try to lie to me about this. I _know_."

He curled back against his pillows, pulling his covers up to his chin, his wide eyes terrified. "Don't tell her," he whispered. "What do you want? Magical weapons to defend the Crystal Empire with? Secret tomes of forbidden magic? Eternal life for your hubby? Whatever you want, Cadance, just... please don't tell her."

"I want your word that you will never, ever do something like this to her again," Cadance said. "With the understanding that if you break your word, I will tell Twilight exactly why you felt the need to do this... and exactly what form of _friendship_ you wish you had with her."

"I don't wish any such thing!" Discord said bitterly. "Love's a weakness, a weapon to use against its victims."

"Yes," Cadance said. "It is. But you shouldn't be ashamed of your feelings, Discord, love is the most chaotic emotion there is. It brings the greatest joys and the most tragic of sorrows. It heals and it destroys. It weakens us and it makes us stronger. It's nothing but contradictions. I'm surprised you haven't explored it before."

He scowled. "I don't use chaos _against_ myself."

"Which is why you didn't recognize the tatzlwurm you yourself created to harass Twilight and me, and why it was able to make you sick. Because your chaos never, ever gets away from your control and turns against you."

"Rub it in, why don't you."

"I'm not here to torment you."

"You're doing a magnificent job if you're not even trying."

"Why, thank you. Coming from the master of torment, that's quite a compliment," Cadance said sweetly. Her eyes narrowed. "But that isn't my objective. My objective is to make sure that you either choose to reject your feelings entirely – which I don't believe you can do, and I don't believe you should do, but it would be a better choice than what you did today – or that you choose to treat Twilight with respect and kindness. Because if you insist on acting like a colt who'll dip a filly's tail in ink or put earthworms in her mane because he likes her, then I'm going to tell Twilight exactly why you're behaving this way toward her."

"She'll never believe you. Me? In love? Her orderly little brain would simply break on the concept."

"I'm her friend, her foalsitter, her sister-in-law... and the Alicorn of Love. You're a well known liar. I think that no matter what you say to her, she'll believe me."

Discord curled up under his blanket, turning into a semicircle. "Fine," he mumbled ungraciously. "I'll be nice to her. This is blackmail, you know."

"Yes," Cadance said, still smiling. "I know."

"It's not like I think I have a chance anyway," he muttered. "I just... everything I've done for her, and she doesn't even know about it, and she doesn't even _care_. And she wouldn't believe me if I told her. And every moment she spends in my presence, I can tell she wants to be anywhere else, and why am I even doing this? If I wanted to be despised and barely tolerated, I could be plunging Equestria into utter glorious chaos right now – well, not right this minute, I'm sick, but I could have done it yesterday! I thought doing this whole friendship thing and reforming meant I wouldn't be hated anymore. That ponies would _want_ to spend time with me for once. But she doesn't."

"Pinkie does. Fluttershy does."

"Yes, yes, Flutters will make friends with any creature who needs her. It hardly even seems personal. I _wish_ I could believe our friendship was based on something other than her feeling I'm some sort of wounded bird who needs friendship because I don't have any... but I don't see any evidence of it. And Pinkie is so _relentlessly_ cheerful. It's unnatural! I _know_ what she's suppressing, but if I tried to help her set it free and become the pony she truly is rather than the pony she thinks she needs to be, everypony would be calling for my head on a platter."

"Twilight's not going to want to spend time with you if all that ever happens when she does is that you make demands on her or taunt her. If you want her to be a friend, you have to be a friend to her."

"She thinks horrible things about me. She doesn't even _want_ to be my friend. She just doesn't want me taking over Equestria."

"So change it."

"I'm not allowed to. Mind control spells are a one-way ticket to Stonesville, according to Princess Sunny Sunny Sunshine. And while I suppose I could get up to all kinds of mischief now that the Tree has taken back its Elements... it seems like it would be completely pointless if I had to use magic to do it."

Cadance sighed. Trust Discord to totally misunderstand what she was saying. "You're right. It would be. The first thing I learned when I learned to do love spells is to never do love spells. Making a pony love you, or somepony else, _is_ completely pointless. You might as well be a foal hugging a plush doll; the thing you love isn't the other pony then, it's yourself reflected off the other pony. You've made them into an object, and if you love an object, that's not the same thing as loving a thinking, feeling being."

"There never used to be a difference," Discord mumbled.

"Really? Because if there was never a difference why didn't you just animate rocks and trees to watch your chaos with you?" Cadance asked. "I know what you did when you got loose, and I've been told about what you did before you were turned to stone. You wanted an audience. You wanted actual ponies who could have actual reactions to what you'd done. If you really couldn't tell the difference between ponies and objects, you could have stuck with objects and then nopony would have tried to turn you to stone. But you needed it to be ponies, because you needed something that wasn't you."

"I... suppose so."

"The most I ever do is strengthen love that already exists, or give those that love the courage and confidence to admit their feelings, because I know the other one feels the same way. I've helped ponies who had fallen out of love with their spouses to rekindle their feelings, but only when they asked me to, and only when I felt that the love was still there buried under the pressures of everyday life. That wasn't what I was talking about when I said for you to change it. You can't mind control Twilight into being your friend, or anything else, because it wouldn't mean anything if you created the emotion. But you can try to _be_ a friend to her. You can try to offer her some reason to enjoy your company. Something about you that she would like. That's how friendship works. Something about the other pony makes us feel good, something about their personality and behavior is something we enjoy, and they feel the same way about us."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" he asked bitterly. "I'm Chaos. She's psychotically obsessed with order."

"Well, what do you like about her?"

"The fact that she's so unbelievably annoying," he said, almost dreamily.

Cadance blinked. "What?"

"Psychotically ordered. As I said. She represents everything I can't stand, and she challenges me with it! But that isn't truly what she is... she has so much power, so much _chaos_ inside her. Why, she swapped out her best friends' _cutie marks_ and brought their lives into total chaos and confusion! It was _wonderful!_ And she denies it about herself, she denies everything about it, all she wants is order and control and precision and she can't _have_ it because she's Magic, and Magic is Chaos! So delightfully contradictory! I _never_ know what she's going to do next. And she's so brilliant and so young and so _completely stupid_ about everything because she's a genius who thinks she knows everything and she has _so_ much more to learn. I could spend the next several centuries challenging her and tormenting her and she'll fight _back_, she'll _learn_ from it, she'll get better and she'll challenge _me_, she already has."

He sagged against the mattress and pulled his covers tight again. "But I'm disharmony. I _love_ what I hate because that's what I am, because I'm all about contradiction and conflict. She isn't. So she'll never see in me what I see in her. I know that. I just want... I just want her to not hate me. I thought I'd done it, that I'd proven she cared, that she would go to the ends of Equestria to help me... but then she got so mad at me for doing it she left me behind when I really _did_ need her. I know it was you who talked her out of it."

"It wasn't," Cadance said. "It was always her plan to get far enough away from you that you wouldn't sense a scrying spell, and watch to see what you did when you thought she wasn't watching."

Discord's eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Really. She never intended to leave you there if you were really sick. It was a test, just as she said." Cadance decided not to mention that it had been obvious to her that he was really sick long before Twilight had been willing to admit it to herself.

"Oh." He looked absurdly pleased, given the circumstances. "Well. That's surprising."

"It must be hard for you," Cadance said gently. "As old as you are, as powerful as you are, to be at the mercy of something you've never experienced before."

"Yes, this flu or whatever it is is positively _dreadful._"

"I wasn't talking about that. I meant love, actually."

He scowled at her. "And how exactly would you know what I've experienced before or haven't?"

"Well, Twilight filled me in on the details of your reformation while we were carrying you out to the flower yesterday, and she said you said Fluttershy was the first friend you'd ever had."

"And having had a friend is a necessary requirement for being in love?" he snapped. "I know a lot more about this than you think I do. I _never_ had anything quite exactly like a friend – I'm not wholly convinced I know what that even is – but I have had a... I have no idea what to call her."

"Someone you loved? Who didn't love you in return?"

He chortled. "You _really_ don't know half as much as you think you do, _Princess_ Cadance. I had someone I loved who _did_ love me in return, or at least claimed she did, for all the good it ever did either of us."

Cadance frowned at him. "Then how is it you never had a friend?"

"Can you call that a friend? When we met, I was too young to understand romantic feelings, so I thought, she must be like a sister. Then puberty hit and I realized my feelings weren't brotherly in the slightest." He chuckled. "I thought she was my other half, my anchor, the melody I was born to counterpoint. She promised me she'd be there forever to keep me tied to this reality, to keep me from drowning in my chaos. Then she abandoned me. And I found out, not only do I have gills, I actually quite like it here at the bottom of the sea." Discord sighed ostentatiously. "I tried to show her how beautiful chaos is, but she couldn't comprehend it. She kept trying to call me back to her reality, as if I could possibly ever want to go. As if it wasn't her fault in the first place for leaving me behind. At least _chaos_ would never leave me."

That... sounded like the other half of a story Cadance was familiar with. "What happened then?"

"Who cares? Ancient history." He coughed again. "I've been blissfully free of the entanglements of this stupid emotion you ponies call 'love' for nearly two thousand years, now, and I have no desire to be enmired in it ever again. You say your powers can tell what I'm feeling? Well, then feel this. I don't _want_ this. If I had the power to make it stop I would. She'll despise me even more than she does now if she knows. So if you know what's good for you, Princess Cadance of the _Crystal_ Empire, you won't tell her."

"Don't set out to ruin her day just to get her attention, and I'll never have to." She levitated her oatmeal bowl, and the soup bowl and tea mug she'd given him earlier, pulling them out of the quarantine bubble and keeping them encased tightly in a health bubble. "I'm going to go wash these and sterilize them, and then I'm going to take a hot shower for my wings, and then I'm going back to bed. You should get some rest too, it'll be a while before anypony else gets up."

"I'm sooooo bored," Discord moaned. "There's nothing in here to distract me from how awful I feel even for a nanosecond."

Cadance shrugged. "Sorry. Being sick is boring. That's why I said you should get some sleep."

"Every time I try to get back to sleep I start coughing again."

She sighed. "Maybe I can find something in the medicine cabinet for you."

First she washed the dishes, in boiling water heated by magic, with a health spell on them for good measure. Then she hunted around through several of Twilight's cabinets to find a menthol neck rub. "Here you go," she said, putting it through the bubble. "You're supposed to rub it on your neck and ch- oh no."

"Bleah, this tastes awful," Discord said, making a face.

"If you'd waited a moment to _listen_ to me... you weren't supposed to eat it, you were supposed to rub it on your neck and your chest!"

He pointed at his neck. "Really, Cadance? This small bottle wouldn't even _cover_ my neck, let alone my chest. Bleah. That is really a _horrible_ taste. Guh." He then proceeded to lick his own neck, a feat Cadance would have sworn would be impossible without his magic. "Well. Maybe that's a little better."

"How are you doing that without breaking your spine?" Cadance asked in horrified fascination.

Discord leered. "I'd show you precisely how flexible I am, but I wouldn't want dear Twilight's BBBFF to feel... inadequate."

Cadance rolled her eyes. "Try using your paws to apply the rest of that bottle, if you left anything in it when you tried to eat it. I'm going back to bed, and you should try to get back to sleep if you can. You need your rest."

"My fur tastes like sour avocados. I wonder if that's why it turned green?"

She didn't dignify that with a reply. Hot shower, maybe some more of the muscle rub Spike had put on her wings last night, and back to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was barely over the horizon as Pinkie Pie bounced her way to the library. Predictably, it was not open. It was never open this early, and after Spike had told her yesterday that Twilight and Cadance had gone off to the ends of Equestria to get a flower to cure Discord's blue flu with, it was even more certain that it would not be open. This just meant Pinkie would have to get creative.

The twitch in her left front hoof had told her yesterday that Discord was faking it, so she'd let him distract her with a balloon, because if she'd pushed and insisted on being the one to take care of him he would probably have done something to her more annoying than giving her a balloon to chase. Like what he did to poor Applejack and Rarity. After he'd taken off searching for Twilight, Pinkie had returned, helped her friends to Fluttershy's house where all the good medicines were, and taken care of them for about two hours until the blue flu spontaneously cleared up, by which point everypony was able to figure out what Pinkie already knew: Discord was a big fat faker. Unfortunately there was no way to get hold of Twilight and Cadance at that point, since Twilight generally didn't actually run the spell that allowed her to _receive_ mail from Spike.

However, the pinch in her right knee and the twitch in her tail told Pinkie that Discord's story about being sick was somehow going to come true. How, she didn't know, when the rapid disappearance of the blue flu and the fact that Discord had been freely using his powers the whole time he'd been claiming to be sick made it plain that the blue flu was not a real illness. But Pinkie didn't question her Pinkie Sense, as a general rule. Discord was somehow going to end up genuinely sick, and Fluttershy wasn't expected back until noon (and possibly longer; it would be entirely like Fluttershy to miss her first train because she was too entranced with her studies of the CUTEST MOST ADORABLE CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE, not that Pinkie knew this to be true for a fact but Fluttershy had said it and Fluttershy knew her cute.) And Twilight was going to be really tired after coming back from the Ends of Equestria (which end? Because technically speaking, Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Baltimare were all along the coastline, which made them an end of Equestria, and not that far away, and then you could go to the north end of Equestria to get to the Crystal Empire, and there was Vanhoover and Las Pegasus out at the other end, and Pinkie was curious which way they'd gone).

So Pinkie had decided that she was going to be Discord's nurse, and also make sure Twilight and Cadance and Spike didn't get the whatever it was that probably wasn't blue flu because blue flu was something Discord made up, at least until Fluttershy came home.

She pulled a trampoline out of the place she'd been hiding it for a trampoline emergency and placed it under one of the large tree branches. A hop, hop, jump, JUMP and she was up in the air, grabbing for one of the branches and flipping herself onto it neatly. Twilight always left at least one of her upstairs windows open at night for Owlowliscious. Pinkie crawled along the branch until she reached the open window, then squeezed herself in.

She suddenly found herself encased in a magic bubble, floating. "Whee!"

"P... Pinkie?" Cadance asked blearily.

"Oh, this is the guest room! So this is where Twilight has you staying? If I was having a sister in law over for the weekend I would probably have her in my bedroom for a sleepover, but none of my sisters are into mares as far as I know so I will probably never have a sister in law unless I get married and my husband, or maybe my wife, has a sister, which I'm totally not planning on doing anytime soon because how can you party all the time if you're married? But then I only have one bedroom because I live in somepony else's house! So maybe if I had a whole house I would put my sister in law that I don't have in the guest room! Except probably not because sleepovers are fun!"

"Pinkie... what are you doing in Twilight's guest room?"

"I'm here to take care of the sickies, silly! Are you a sicky? I hope you're not sick. I didn't get any twitchies about you but I don't know you that well so I don't even know if I would!"

Cadance blinked. "Discord's sick. I've been casting magic health bubble and Twilight has him in a quarantine bubble now, so nopony else got sick. It's not the blue flu, it turns out he was faking about that."

"I know! That's why I let him give me a balloon!"

"What?"

"Where is he? I thought he would be in the guest room, that's why I came in this way!"

"He's downstairs in the library."

"Well, that's really silly! You don't let super chaos guy sleep in the super organized room, he's probably going to run around messing it up just so he can get to sleep! You know I can't sleep in a super organized room either? As soon as it's really organized it feels like it's a box and I hate to sleep in a box! Unless it's a really big box! Or I'm pretending it's a secret fort!"

"He's in a quarantine bubble, I don't think he'll be getting out to mess up the books. He doesn't have his powers right now, Pinkie."

"Really?" Pinkie's eyes went wide. "Does that mean I can _tickle him?_"

"He's _sick._"

"But if I wait until he's better then he'll have his powers back and I won't be able to tickle him!"

"He's also in a quarantine bubble."

"I'll use Zen Tickle."

"I am too tired to ask you what Zen Tickle is."

"I'll demonstrate! Tomorrow! Meanwhile I have to feed a draconequus chicken soup! With whipped cream on top! See, _I_ don't forget the whipped cream!"

She bounced off, ignoring the waves of bewilderment that radiated off Cadance. Twilight was a light sleeper, so Pinkie made sure not to yell "whee" as she slid down the banister, figuring that the clopping of hooves on the stairs would be more likely to wake Twilight than the sliding but it would miss the point of being super quiet if she then yelled, though she did whisper "whee" to herself because how could you slide down a banister without going "whee" at least a little bit?

Discord was, in fact, lying on a mattress in the middle of the library, with a bubble around him. He was shifting restlessly in his sleep, curled on the mattress with half his tail falling off of it and onto the floor, and a blanket tangled around his middle. He was also green. He wasn't green the way he'd been blue, a vivid, brilliant shade; he was dull green, with darker spots all over the light parts of his fur and lighter spots all over the dark parts of his fur. And he smelled like sour avocados, which made Pinkie think she should have brought sour cream instead of whipped cream. Unfortunately she wasn't generally prepared for a sour cream emergency. Maybe in the future she needed to expect that.

"Hiii, Discord!" she caroled at him, in a slightly less loud voice than usual since she was trying to avoid waking Twilight up.

Discord opened his eyes. "Pinkie?" he mumbled. "I have a fever..."

"I brought you something..."

"Is it cough drops? Because I would renounce chaos for the rest of eternity if someone could bring me some cough drops."

"Then you'd be super boring! How would you even have anything to do if you renounced chaos?" Pinkie pulled out her emergency hazmat suit and started putting it on. "I thought Twilight might quarantine you if you got something weird!"

"Pinkie, where did you get that... never mind. _Do_ you have cough drops? Because if you don't I really just want to go back to sleep and try to pretend to myself that there isn't an entire colony of Diamond Dogs digging for gems in my throat."

"There are? Sillies, what makes them think you have gems in your throat? I know that would be all chaotic and everything but gems, really? You don't even eat gems! They should look in Spike's throat!"

"Pinkie, do you actually know that that was a joke and you're playing straight mare to be funny, or did you really think I meant it?"

Pinkie sighed deeply. "That was cruel, Dissy," she said. "What did that poor joke do to you that you had to kill it like that?"

"My apologies. I'm not at my sharpest at the moment." He inspected his claws. "Perhaps with a bit more filing."

"You'll need Twilight's help with that, I bet. You're probably much too disorganized to be filing anything!"

"I assure you I can file with the best of them. Everything goes in the folder that says 'Do This Later' unless it's garbage, in which case I have Spike copy it in triplicate and send it to Celestia. Isn't that how to do it?"

Pinkie grinned. She really missed having conversations like this. "You remind me of my old Granny Pie."

Discord leaned forward, eyes comically huge though not actually magically altered. "All the better to see you with, my dear," he croaked.

Now that her hazmat suit was on and sealed, Pinkie clambered through the airlock flap on the bubble and hopped onto Discord's chest, pushing his head back against the wall of the bubble. "Open wide, Nurse Pinkie's got some medicine for you," she said.

"Why, Pinkie, this is so forward of you! Though I really expected a bit more naughty out of a naughty nurse costume. You look more like a member of a biohazard cleanup team."

"Which reminds me has anypony brought you a bedpan or something? Or do you even need one? Is your pee all chaosy like lemonade or something or is it just like regular pee?"

"I'd offer you a taste so you could see for yourself, but even I have standards."

"Yeah, that's just gross. So! Potty or no potty?"

"No one has brought me a bedpan and eventually this will become an issue if you don't suffocate me from sitting on my chest first."

"Whoops!" She rolled off him but continued to push his neck up against the side of the bubble. "Now be a good little chaos spirit and open super wide!"

"What exactly are you going to inflict on me?"

"Medicine for your throat. It's much better than cough drops, trust me. It's even yummy! Almost."

"Well, that fills me with confidence," Discord mumbled, but did as he was told. "Aaah."

Pinkie whipped out the jar of honey, laced with menthol and healing balm and some weird stuff Zecora had given her, and popped open the lid, letting the liquid pour into Discord's mouth and down his throat. He coughed and tried to splutter, but she held him in position until half the jar was gone. Which didn't take very long; the stuff mixed with it made it a lot thinner and more fluid than pure honey.

As she put the jar away, Discord straightened up, smacking his lips and making strange faces. "I don't know whether that tasted delicious or utterly horrible."

"Both," Pinkie said. "That'll soothe your throat for about four hours or so, and Fluttershy ought to be home around then, and if she's not, you can take the other half the dose. Sorry there's so much but you have a very very very very long neck! I figured if the whole inside of your neck was hurting with coughs and a sore throat that would be a whole lot of neck to have to coat with medicated honey, so I made a whole jar!"

"Pinkie, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"I know lots of things," Pinkie said. "You like hot sauce, right?"

"I love it. Normally. Right now I am dubious."

"Hot sauce is good for you when you're sick! It clears your sinuses and it makes your immune system work harder! I brought you some hot chicken soup, and by hot I mean both the temperature kind and the spice kind, but not the kind that's stallions because that would just be super weird."

"Did you say _chicken_ soup?"

Pinkie nodded proudly. "Granny Pie used to swear by it when we got sick."

"I hope you didn't kill any of Flutters' chickens. She'll be quite irate."

Pinkie laughed. "No way, silly billy, of course I didn't! There isn't even any real chicken in it. I order the chicken stock from Gryphonia because it has to come from chickens and have some real chicken fat in it or it doesn't work the same way, but instead of chicken it has tofu marinated in chicken stock. Also hot sauce, green onions, lots and lots of garlic, mushrooms, and noodles!" She pulled out the thermos. "And I brought whipped cream to put on top of it."

Discord's eyes went big again. "You brought _whipped cream_ for my _soup_? That's astonishing. How did you think of that?"

"I just thought of the weirdest thing to go on top of soup that would actually stay on top of the soup, because I figured whatever the weirdest thing was to go on top of the soup, you would like it!"

"It sounds delicious. And given that my stomach and I are _not_ getting along well at the moment, something that sounds delicious is impressive. But I suppose the proof will be in the pudding, as they say."

"No, no, it's _soup,_ not pudding."

He sighed. "And to think what a wonderful setup for a joke that would have been if I'd had my powers."

"But if you'd had your powers you could have made your own chicken soup." She unscrewed the top of the thermos and handed it to him. "Hold this." Next she pulled out her whipped cream can and sprayed a generous dose of whipped cream on top of the soup in the thermos. Once she was done, she took a shot of whipped cream herself. "Yum!"

"Are you done? Can I drink it now?"

"Do you want extra chili pepper on top?"

"Hmm. Yes, I think that would go quite well."

Pinkie took out her red pepper grinder and ground sprinkles of chili and cayenne all over the top of the whipped cream. "Here you go!"

Discord took a swig of his soup. His tongue, still ridiculously long despite his lack of magic, snaked out of his mouth and licked his lips, then lapped at the whipped cream. Apparently satisfied with the taste, he chugged the rest of the thermos so quickly Pinkie didn't even have time to start chanting "Chug! Chug!" before he handed it back to her. "Delicious as always, Pinkie," he said.

"Do you feel any better now?"

"Yes, but possibly only because I've eaten solid food. I haven't had anything to eat since my magic cut out on me, you know. Just broth and tea."

"Well, yeah. You're sick. That's what you're supposed to have."

He made a face at her. "A draconequus cannot survive on broth alone. I don't think I realized quite how hungry I was until I had your soup." Discord lay back down again. "Although I'm still very tired. Why am I so tired? Is this normal when ponies get sick?"

"Sometimes, yeah," Pinkie said. "Rarity and Applejack weren't tired when you got them sick, just really sneezy and coughy. Which by the way that was _mean!_" She glared down at him. He smirked at her. "I know you wanted an excuse so you could go bother Twilight but making my friends sick was not a nice way to do it!"

"They got better quickly," Discord pointed out.

"That doesn't make it not mean. How would you feel about somepony if they were the one who made _you_ sick? How did you get sick, anyway?"

"Twilight didn't tell you?"

"I haven't even talked to Twilight, silly! She's still asleep!"

Discord blinked. "So you came over here to take care of me because you thought I still had the blue flu?"

"Oh, no, I knew you were a big fat faker from the beginning! My Pinkie Sense told me so!"

"I object to your characterization of me." He sat up again with a look of indignation on his face, folding his arms tight against his chest. "I am quite svelte."

She leaned over him to one side and back to the side she was standing on, inspecting the width of his body. "You're right! You're a big skinny faker!"

"_Thank_ you." He nodded, graciously acknowledging her correction. "So then how did you know I was sick? I cannot imagine you brought chicken soup with hot sauce and whipped cream to feed to our esteemed noble Princesses."

"Because I got a special twitch that told me you were sick. I knew Twilight and Spike weren't because I would've gotten twitchies for them and I didn't, and I didn't know about Princess Cadance, because I didn't get a twitch but I don't know her that well so maybe I wouldn't, but I got a twitch and a pinch and it told me you would be sick! Which is funny because I never got a twitch for you being sick before but probably you never _were_ sick before and if you were it probably was before we were friends so it took me a while to figure out what it meant but then I did and I knew that when you and Twilight and Princess Cadance came home you were going to be a sicky and I would have to bring you some chicken soup because otherwise you would whine a lot and wake up Twilight and that totally wouldn't be fair after you made her do so much flying. And also because you're my friend even though sometimes you're a big jerk! And also because I really would've taken care of you if you really did have blue flu but since you really didn't I didn't have to and then you gave me a balloon which was nice! You could have made me sick like my friends but you didn't so I'm mad at you about making them sick but I'm happy you gave me a balloon instead of making me sick! You should have given them balloons too!"

"They wouldn't likely have been distracted by balloons, Pinkie."

"Oh, right! I guess you would have had to give Rarity some gems and they don't even float! And what could you give Applejack? If she saw a floating apple she would just think it was because of you making things float that shouldn't float!" As she spoke, Pinkie climbed onto Discord's chest again, carefully because she didn't want to crush his lungs, hooves folded under her chin, looking at his face intently. "So how did you get sick?"

He sighed. "An enormous, monstrous plant creature called a tatzlwurm that I did _not_ intend to make that size, or that annoying, spat some sort of goo at me. And at Cadance and Twilight, but Cadance cast a health spell to protect _them_. I suppose it was too much to ask of her that she include _me_ in her health spell as well."

Pinkie scowled at him. "Discord, do health spells even work on you?"

"Well, no, but she could have made an effort!"

"Are you being absodupeylutely super-dee-duper telling the truth here, or are you just being truthy? Because Cadance not even trying to cure you doesn't make any sense, and if it doesn't make any sense it's probably something you did, and if it's something you did then Cadance really did try to help you and you're just pretending she didn't because disharmony and stuff."

"Pinkie, I'm _shocked_ that you'd think I would lie about something to you!" He pressed his paws to his chest in a dramatic gesture worthy of Rarity.

"Do you see this face?" Pinkie leaned forward, pointing a hoof at her own nose. "This is a straight face. This is not a face that is laughing, because that wasn't even a funny joke. Now if you had said 'I'm shocked, _shocked_ that you'd think I would lie about something to you, and by the way, Princess Celestia is right behind you,' and then she wasn't, that would be funny because then you'd be lying about something that's even more obvious than the lying about Princess Cadance, which is mean and you had better stop. What really happened?"

"Well, she did cast her magic health bubble," he grumbled, "but it had no effect on me. And then she went along with Twilight's plan to leave me behind so they could spy on me to see if I was really faking, and I almost got eaten by two different tatzlwurms! And _then_ they tied me up and dragged me home like I was a kite being flown between the two of them!"

"That sounds fun!"

"It wasn't. It really, really wasn't."

"Maybe it would have been more fun if you weren't sick."

"I doubt it." He lay back down again. "I'm tired, Pinkie. And I want some water. I don't suppose you have somewhere on you a teensy tiny glass of water?"

"Nope! All I have is a big pitcher of water!" She pulled out her pitcher. "I see you already have a glass, so here!" Pinkie poured ice water into the glass until it was brimming.

"I knew I could count on you." Discord lifted his head without sitting up, and drank the water even more quickly than he'd drunk the soup. "Do you think I still have a fever?" he mumbled, laying his head back down again.

"Probably. I didn't give you any anti-fever potions or anything; you'll have to wait for Fluttershy for that. Granny Pie's chicken soup is just supposed to help sickies feel better, not actually be medicine or anything."

"Then I think I need to sleep." He closed his eyes. "This is astonishing. I've never felt so tired, you know. Or so heavy, well, outside of being stone. It feels like all the energy in my body has just... leaked away. Is this what it's like for ponies?"

"You asked that already. Weren't you ever sick before? Ever ever ever?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Lucky you! But also poor you because you're sick now. I'm gonna get out of this bubble now because all my mane is getting in my face under this face hood thing! Are you going to be okay?"

"How would I know? I feel like I might expire from sheer exhaustion any moment now, but it seems unlikely that that's _actually_ the case."

"But you don't need anything else to eat or drink or something?"

"Just sleep," he murmured.

"Okie dokie!" She climbed out of the quarantine bubble, pulled off her hazmat suit and shoved it into a bag to be sterilized once Twilight woke up. Then she laid back against the bubble. "This thing is comfy! It's like laying on a balloon!"

"It's not big enough," Discord grumbled. "I can't stretch out in here."

"I never see you stretch out anyway."

"You try spending a thousand years stuck with your back and tail fully extended and see how much you like stretching out all the way. But at least most of the time I have the _option._"

"Maybe Twilight can make it bigger once we take you to Fluttershy's, but if it got too big here, anypony who wanted to use the library would have to walk around you! Besides at least it's comfy! You know what would be really bad is if she put you in a bubble and it was all crunchy and scritchy and it made annoying noises anytime anypony touched it!"

"The glass is always half full with you, isn't it, Pinkie?"

"Not usually! Usually it's either full, so I'm gonna drink it, or empty, because I just drank it! Half full is like two seconds at most!"

Discord laughed. Pinkie poked the bubble with her hoof, grinning. "I made you laugh!"

"That isn't hard," he said. "I laugh at most things."

"Me too, but I still like it when I can make you laugh, even if it's not as hard as it is with some ponies. Anyway, you're sick! And they say laughter is the best medicine, right?"

"Did you ever wonder who 'they' are? They say this. They say that. Who _are_ they, and why does every pony in Equestria feel compelled to quote them all the time?"

"I know! I wonder the same thing! And if they say all this important stuff that we always think about, how come we don't even know their names? I mean, Starswirl the Bearded wrote all these super amazing spells, according to Twilight, so she knows _his_ name, but they have _all_ these wise sayings and stuff and yet we don't even know who they are or what kind of pony or anything!"

"How do you even know they are ponies? Maybe they're draconequui and that's why ponies don't want anyone to know who they are. It's a conspiracy."

"Ooh, yeah, it could be! Or maybe they are dragons! Most grownup dragons are jerks and stupid so nopony would ever believe they could be so wise if they're dragons, but Spike is a smart dragon so it could be dragons!"

"Or maybe they're _humans_."

"Lyra would know, I bet!"

Discord laughed again, which set Pinkie off into a fit of giggles. "Pinkie, I don't think there is any other pony in Equestria who can manage to keep up with me like that. Bravo."

"We should hang out more often," Pinkie agreed.

Discord looked surprised. "Hang... out?"

"Yeah, you know! Not from trees or anything, although you could because your body's all long and flexy and twiny and you could hang from a tree easy, I bet, but I couldn't because my body won't do that so easily and I could hang from my back legs like an acrobat but then all the blood would go to my head and I'd get dizzy! Which is fun but it wouldn't last very long because if I got dizzy enough I'd fall out of the tree!"

"Well, if trees are out, where were you suggesting we should hang out?"

"You know. Ponyville, or I dunno, anyplace really. You write letters to Fluttershy and I know you come visit her sometimes but you know, I _like_ spending time with you when you're not being a big mean jerk, and you never come to visit _me._"

"You're always surrounded by a crowd of ponies, one way or another," Discord said. "And the whole 'eek! Run away, it's Discord!' thing gets old after a while."

"Didn't ponies do that when you took over Equestria?"

"Some did, but back in those days, they figured out fairly easily that that just annoys me. The ones who ran away screaming were much, much more likely to end up suffering from my more egregious pranks than the ones who were willing to play along." He sighed. "But nowadays I'm not _allowed_ to put pony legs sticking up from their back so they have to walk around upside down because they couldn't be bothered to have a civil conversation with me, so there's really not much I can do about the pointing and screaming anymore."

"Well, sticking pony legs on their backs is part of the reason for the pointing and screaming, did you ever think of that?"

"And yet I don't do that anymore and they still point and scream."

"Okay then! We should totally hang out then! Because if ponies saw _me_ spending time with you, well, they all know that Fluttershy is friends with all the scary animals and besides she doesn't like to go into town anyway, so even if they saw her with you that wouldn't make them think you're nice now because seriously, she makes friends with _manticores_, and they totally ruin parties when they show up! But they all know _I_ like to have fun, so if I'm hanging out with somepony, or somedraconequus, which sounds really silly and have you ever considered having a shorter name for what you are, like you know pony and dragon and gryphon all have just two syllables but draconequus is a real mouthful, but anyway, if they saw me hanging out with you they would know that you're fun and not scary! Most of the time. Sometimes you're still scary."

"Sometimes Twilight is positively terrifying and that doesn't seem to impede her ability to make friends."

"Yeah, she is!" Pinkie giggled. "So see? If we hang out then ponies won't be as scared of you and we can have fun and do silly things! Also chocolate rain!"

"I don't like to repeat myself constantly," Discord said. "I _am_ somewhat fond of the chocolate rain, but if I did it all the time I'd be predictable."

"What about fluffy donut holes? What if you made it rain fluffy donut holes?"

"Would ponies like that?"

"No! Except for me! But I'm a pony so if you wanted to make it rain fluffy donut holes on a pony you could rain them on me and then I could eat them!"

"I have no idea why you aren't obese by now."

"Because sugar is energy! You only get fat from sugar if you don't burn your sugar! Mister, it takes a _lot_ of sugar to maintain _my_ high-energy lifestyle." She poked her hoof at the bubble again with a fake stern expression.

"That actually makes a surprising amount of sense. For shame, Pinkie, I thought you were supposed to be as sheerly nonsensical as I am."

Pinkie laughed. "But everything makes sense if you look at it from the right perspective. Even you. It's just that ponies don't understand you so they don't _think_ you make sense."

"And you do?"

"Sometimes!"

Discord adjusted himself on the bed so that he was on his belly in a semicircle rather than on his back in an S, and looked up at her with his eyes rather than lifting his head. The expression made him look almost plaintive. "You'd really want to spend time with me? Because in my experience most ponies would rather have a hooficure with rotten eggs and a toothbrush that's been sitting in a stagnant algae covered pond for a month than spend any time with me."

"_I_ am not most ponies. I am Pinkamena Pinkie Diane Pie, the First! And if _I_ say I want to hang out with you, then I don't care what most ponies think! Do you care what most ponies think?"

"Not for the past few millennia and I don't intend to start, no."

"Well then! When you get better! I have to plan Rainbow Dash's birthdayversary because that needs to be a super duper amazing party and it's like in a few weeks so I might not have time right away, but after the birthdayversary we should get together and do something fun. We could bring Fluttershy too! But she won't want to do anything too wacky, but I bet she would laugh if she saw us doing it."

"That does sound moderately entertaining. Fine." He rolled onto his back again. "Once I'm recovered and you've held your overly planned shindig for Rainbow Smash, we can spend a day together and find some entertaining chaos to wreak that won't upset your delicate 'not making ponies mad' sensibilities and won't make Fluttershy too irritated with me."

"Great! It'll be tons of fun!"

"Can you actually guarantee tons? Because I've actually handled a ton of fun, and believe you me, it is much larger and heavier than you are probably picturing."

"Well, I didn't want to get into anything _too_ heavy! Maybe we just want light fun. But even if it's light fun, if you have enough of it that would make a ton!"

"Not if you negate gravity on it."

"Oh yeah! Fun with no gravity! That sounds good!"

"Perhaps we can even employ levity."

"Yeah! Enough of that and we could fill a balloon with it!"

"You're obsessed with balloons, aren't you?"

She pointed at her cutie mark. "Hellooooo..."

"Ah, good point." He closed his eyes. "Still tired, Pinkie."

"Yeah, you need your rest." Pinkie leaned back against the quarantine bubble again, facing out toward the library. It _was_ very comfy. Balloons were surprisingly uncomfortable to lay on – she'd tried, multiple times, but they squeaked and a properly firm balloon was actually rather hard. Whatever material Twilight had made the bubble with, it felt soft and fluffy, like a transparent cloud. Obviously it was tougher than a cloud, but it felt nice. She sighed.

"Discord?"

"Mm?"

"How come you wanted to spend time with Twilight so badly anyway? I offered to take care of you but all you wanted to do was bother Twilight. How come?"

She heard him sigh. "Pinkie, of all of the six of you, which one of you do you think is most like me?"

"Hmm. Well, Dashie likes to play funny pranks, and Rarity's very creative and artistic and she likes to make things that are different, and Twilight is smart like you, and—"

"Be serious for two seconds. I said 'all of the six of you', not 'all of your friends.' That means I was including _you_ in the question."

She grinned. "You said 'be serious.' You need to be careful, they're gonna come and take your chaos license away if you do that too much."

"Never. I've paid them far too many bribes. Now answer my question."

"Me, I guess."

"Now, which of you is _least_ like me?"

"Applejack," Pinkie said promptly. "Because she's honest all the time, and you're funny almost all the time, and funny is never exactly honest. And sometimes you lie to be mean too which isn't usually very funny. And she believes that you should do everything with hard work and you should do it the right and proper way and that's how good things happen, and you believe you should do everything with magic and breaking the rules and finding tricks to solve problems. And when she sees all chaos stuff she's just all like, 'Somepony had better fix this', whereas Twilight's all like 'Aaah! This is all nonsense and crazy and I'm gonna go crazy trying to fix it' and Rarity pretends to faint and Dashie just gets mad."

"Interesting. There's a certain logic to what you say; I suppose she's even more my opposite than Twilight is. But Twilight is the one I was thinking of. Twilight _depends_ on order, even though she's actually better at generating chaos than the vast majority of ponies. Twilight is terrified of or infuriated by chaos."

"Right! So why did you want to spend time with her?"

"What seems more likely to cause disharmony? Spending time with someone who is a lot like you, or spending time with someone who is completely unlike you and yet enough like you, deep down, to be utterly discombobulated by what you do, rather than simply grimly annoyed?"

"I keep forgetting about the disharmony thing. That's... not nice, you know."

"I am what I am, Pinkie. The name's 'Discord', not 'Fun Guy'."

"I guess that's good, because then you'd be a mushroom!"

"Or I could be yeast. I could make bread rise, brew beer, and give mares terribly annoying itches in their nethers. I think I'd enjoy being yeast, actually."

"But then I could defeat you with yogurt!"

"Do you even eat yogurt?"

"With blueberries, yeah! It's tasty!"

"Have you ever tried boysenberries?"

"No, because I always used to mix up my p's and b's, and nopony would want Binkie Bye to eat yogurt with poison berries!"

"They'd be poison perries, wouldn't they be?"

"But that would be a blatybus!"

"Regrettably, I think I'm actually too tired for this conversation." He sighed. "You're fun, Pinkie. I enjoy spending time with you. But the very thing I enjoy about you is that you can match me. Sometimes... I _need_ someone who will oppose me, instead."

"I guess that makes sense. Weird sense, but that's your kind of sense."

"Pinkie?"

"Yeah?"

"I _really_ need to go back to sleep now. Please be quiet."

"Okie dokie lokie! I'm gonna go make fluffy donut holes now in Twilight's kitchen! You can have some when you wake up if you feel better!"

She skipped off to the kitchen, feeling much better. Discord distracting her with a balloon to get her out of his way had given her mixed feelings; on the one hand, he hadn't gotten her sick as he had her friends, and he'd given her something she liked, even if she did have to spend ten minutes chasing it first. On the other hand... she'd offered to take care of him, to spend time with him, even knowing he was faking his illness, and he'd rejected her because his master plan had apparently been to go annoy Twilight all day. Why would he rather annoy Twilight than spend time with somepony who _wanted_ to spend time with him? The disharmony thing made her feel better; she didn't like the aspect of Discord that loved conflict and stirring up bad feelings, so she tended to forget about it except when he got her really angry, like when his stupid vines attacked Ponyville and he was pretending he didn't have anything to do with it even though he totally did, but he was right that it was part of who he was. If she wanted to make friends with him because she liked the chaos, she was going to have to deal with the disharmony; he was both.

But at least he hadn't rejected her because he didn't like her or he didn't think she was fun! That was the important thing. Pinkie whistled as she pulled baking supplies out of Twilight's cabinets. Twilight liked donut holes.


End file.
